We now have 4 tortoise at the farm. 2 Giant African Tortoise that will eventually grow very large. They were donated by someone as they proved very costly to feed. We have named them Joey and Josephine. They are pictured here on Valentines Day having a bit of a cuddle - the picture made it into the Blackpool Gazette! How sweet. We have had them just over a year - making them one of the more recent arrivals to the rare breed centre. They are very heavy and are brought out in a big wheelbarrow during the farm school trip hands-on, so that children can touch them - but watch out for their strong beaks!

We also have 2 small traditional tortoise as well that we have now put in with the Giant African ones. They all get along very well indeed and we have not had problems with them living together. We have had the smaller 2 for quite a few years now.

Tortoises or land turtles  are land-dwelling reptiles of the family of Testudinidae, order Testudines. Like their marine  cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise has both an endoskeleton  and an exoskeleton. Tortoises can vary in size from a few centimeters to two meters. Tortoises tend to be diurnal  animals with tendencies to be crepuscular  depending on the ambient temperatures. They are generally reclusive animals.
Female tortoises dig nesting burrows in which they lay from one to thirty eggs.  Egg laying typically occurs at night, after which the mother tortoise covers her clutch with sand, soil, and organic material. The eggs are left unattended, and depending on the species, take from 60 to 120 days to incubate.  The size of the egg depends on the size of the mother and can be estimated by examining the width of the cloacal opening between the carapace  and plastron. The plastron of a female tortoise often has a noticeable V-shaped notch below the tail to facilitate passing the eggs. Upon completion of the incubation period, a fully-formed hatchling  uses an egg tooth to break out of its shell. It digs to the surface of the nest and begins a life of survival on its own. Hatchlings are born with an embryonic egg sac which serves as a source of nutrition for the first 3 to 7 days until they have the strength and mobility to find food. Juvenile tortoises often require a different balance of nutrients than adults, and therefore may eat foods which a more mature tortoise would not. For example, it is common that the young of a strictly herbivorous species will consume worms or insect larvae  for additional protein.
Tortoises generally have lifespans comparable with those of human beings, and some individuals are known to have lived longer than 150 years. Because of this, they symbolize longevity in some cultures, such as China. The oldest tortoise ever recorded, almost the oldest individual animal ever recorded, was Tu'i Malila, which was presented to the Tongan royal family by the British explorer Captain Cook shortly after its birth in 1777. Tui Malila remained in the care of the Tongan royal family until its death by natural causes on May 19, 1965. This means that upon its death, Tui Malila was 188 years old.  The record for the longest-lived vertebrate is exceeded only by one other, a koi named Hanako whose death on July 17, 1977 ended a 226 year life span.